Landing Signal Officers (LSOs) are naval aviators specially trained to facilitate the "safe and expeditious recovery" of naval aircraft aboard aircraft carriers. They are called "Paddles" and usually after that word is uttered comes the phrase "are gay". It's an ongoing joke. These guys are aviators who are trained to talk guys down after the "ball call" (which is about 3/4 of a mile behind the ship) and then grade each pilot on their landings. If you are looking for more detail in regards to this matter check out LSO on Wikipedia, so I don't get into the weeds about hook to ramp, high come down in the middle and all the other details that could take hours to explain.
At U.S. Navy LSO school in Virginia Beach, VA they put together this video of crashes and basically everything that can go wrong during the course of landing a 50 thousand pound plane on a moving ship. In that video there are three music videos one of which is called: "Drift and Die". The song in the background for the entire seven minutes is this one, "Clubbed to Death" It took me four years to find out what the name of it was and who performed it, strangely enough I was searching Youtube one night watching videos of old Porsche racing on a track in the UK and as luck would have it the same song was playing, with the help of Shazam I was in business. Now when I say I spent four years looking for this song it wasn't a part time job, no shit I called the LSO school, tried to track down the guys who made the video, talked to everyone I knew who was into electronic music and tried to hum or beatbox the song to them, when I finally found the name it was is not an exaggeration to put me up in the realm of Columbus, Hillary and Armstrong.
I don't particularly enjoy this type of music and still can't piece together whether it was the video (my first exposure) or the actual track that makes me like it and at this time since I am corrupted there is no way to know, you'll have to decide for yourself in your listening because it is impossible to get the actual "Drift and Die" video...the Navy doesn't really dig putting the deaths of men out for the public.
So in that case picture a green and dark green night vision picture of the island (the part that sticks above the flight deck) of an aircraft carrier with rain swept winds swirling around it, the scene cuts to an inside view of a cockpit and an aviator about to land, the camera switches to the flight deck just in time to watch the rear end of the jet catch the back end of the carrier and burst into flames the LSO yells fuck over the radio; another scene where you don't see the jet until it lands because the rain and fog was so thick; one of a plane aerodynamically stalling, flipping over while the pilot ejects into the flight deck, his jet crashing into three others on the flight deck and the screen goes white with flames; a Prowler (EA-6B) landing on top of an Viking (S-3B); a Tomcat (F-14) going inverted and the ejection seats rocketing the crew into the ocean to certain death...meanwhile that pulsing bass and thin piano amping in the background. The song captures what it is really like to be behind the boat when a lot of things are going wrong in the cockpit, there's a lot of bad weather and you are hoping that they find your life insurance policy and you cleaned out all the porn out of that cabinet below the sink in the bathroom. But because you are better than everyone else (or thank God at least believe so) you come out on top, walk down to the Ready Room and joke about it with the boys sitting around dipping and playing die. It isn't an everyday occurrence but it does happen, when it did I can say that the boys we all did it with were some of the best and that's why I'm sitting here writing this.
